Thread: How to go broke and some hot boring action.

Silk purse....sows ear? Don't you love some people's logic. They want it fixed but don't want to spend anything on new parts, and will they pay you?

Next up the hub... I put the parts together to try to work out where the seal will run and I think I have it worked out...

Chuck it up in the four jaw, try to find a reference area... Find two and get the run out down to a small amount..

then notice the free end is wobbling all over the place... Yes the stub axle is bent...

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Advise client of new developments and ask about the condition of all the rest of it, the planetary gears and the carrier and the ring gear..... he tells me it is pretty sad... I tell him I can repair the seal area, but cannot guarantee anything as I have no reference points... He says to do my best...

So I scratch my head and think about it, adjust this and that, then it falls out of the four jaw, I say some nice words and go have a cup of coffee... Then come back to it and average out the errors and say it is as good as I can get it and machine away the seal area for a sleeve...

Then turn up a sleeve and fit it on... Refit the parts and realise the seal will not fit properly as it will butt up against one area before being fully seated... As it is a scot seal it is an integrated unit and everything has to be right..

So rechuck the stub axle and machine where the bearing butts up against so I can put a washer in there to move the position of the bearing 2mm... Machine back to fresh metal so I need a 4mm thick washer.. Machine up a washer, reassemble, measure and looks good.... Job done... say some more choice words or celebration..

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Know next time to say no to jobs like this... Or ask more questions... The fix is pointless in my opinion..

A couple of weeks ago I got some windmill parts dropped off.. About 1920's vintage..

No big deal to fix, simply bore out six holes and bush them...

Good job for the horizontal borer..

It took me quite awhile to do this job, as I have little tooling for the borer so had to make some boring bars...

Went smoothly, until the borer motor died just before the last hole, which I then finished by hand by turning the facing head over about ten thousand times...

all up went well and was pretty straight forward... I do like these borers..... I need a bigger better one now

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You may be too "handy" for the folk around you bring you all their flogged out bits. But it will at least feed the "Tool Acquisition Addiction" that we all have in varying degrees.
Did you enjoy the task of working on these bits with your machinery?

I know what it like RC. At work we repair a lot of bits off earth moving and mining equipment. By the time it needs repair, every surface is worn and it's a bit of a guessing game when you try to clock it up. Or we have to make a new part and have to infer what the dimensions should be off the stuffed part.

Originally Posted by chambezio

You may be too "handy" for the folk around you bring you all their flogged out bits. But it will at least feed the "Tool Acquisition Addiction" that we all have in varying degrees.
Did you enjoy the task of working on these bits with your machinery?

Well I do not mind helping people out but, I think a lot of people have little knowledge of the level of precision and time required to do precision jobbing work...

Bearing fits have to be done right... and even measuring can be problematic, especially on these larger sizes... I know the final cut can only be taken when the part is cool, not when it is at 80C which parts often are after some rough turning with carbide.. At 80C it might be 0.07mm bigger then at 20C, plays havok with the tolerances..

To make the sleeve fit, if I compress it too much it shrinks the ID and as it is only thin, again throws the bearing bore tolerance out.. Then there is the seal fit.. And it all takes time to get it right... The other problem is I do not know what sort of runout is allowable and what isn't.. Have I gone overboard or not? Given I now know the condition of everything else, I most likely did go overboard...

With that washer I made, changing the position of the bearing....As I do not have access to the rest of the parts, I do not know what it affects, if anything at all.... Experience with other machines with planetary final drives in the wheel hubs tells me it should not affect anything, but are hough loaders any different?

At the end of the day, I will probably charge $350 of which $50 is for material or so for the job and put it down to experience on what not to take on, and next time advise the owner to check out the wreckers first... The client wants to pay cash, which is no advantage to me.. I took him mentioning cash as him expected it to be cheap... I just spent $500 getting a small hydraulic spool valve repaired, which was probably around 4 hours work.. Shops around here are $100/hr minimum, which they have to be because of the costs and overheads..

I think i am going to have to start getting realistic with my charging.. Otherwise I will go broke..

How many hours did you put in RC?

I probably don't charge enough either, but i do it so i can buy more tools and not as part of my income.

Ew

If would have to be six, seven hours or so.. The amount of machining time was maybe half that or less, the rest would be measuring and set up... It was a bit here, a bit there with the interruptions.. A few repair design errors on my part (not machining enough off in some areas) requiring the part to be rechucked slowed things down a bit..

Maybe add on another hour for swearing at the part...

Originally Posted by .RC.

Well I do not mind helping people out but, I think a lot of people have little knowledge of the level of precision and time required to do precision jobbing work... [snip] I think i am going to have to start getting realistic with my charging.. Otherwise I will go broke..

This is why I don't do 'paying' jobs. I've found the same thing you have, and funnily enough I was close to your age when I did. I sometimes do machining work for others but I'm not cheap and I do NOT take cash. It either goes through the books complete with tax invoice or if it's a friend who's really stuck, it's free. Cash jobs sooner or later lead to tears. PDW

So that works out to 50 bucks an hour, if you had a 40 hr week of work at 50/hr you would have made 2 grand.

You don't have overheads that the engineering joints have, so I reckon profit wise you likely made
more out of the job than an engineering shop would have.

shed

Originally Posted by chambezio

You may be too "handy" for the folk around you bring you all their flogged out bits. But it will at least feed the "Tool Acquisition Addiction" that we all have in varying degrees.
Did you enjoy the task of working on these bits with your machinery?

I think that you are right about being "handy". I have a lot of people bringing stuff around to fix or make a new one, some even bring the steel, usually it's rusted crap that Sims would reject. Expect you to work for 2-3 hours on it, then when you tell them $50.00 they take ages to pay for it, sometimes its a 10 here then a 20 after about 2 months you get the rest. You chat them up about it and they say "but you work from home", I still have to pay for electricity and welding gas etc.
Kryn

Originally Posted by shedhappens

So that works out to 50 bucks an hour, if you had a 40 hr week of work at 50/hr you would have made 2 grand.

You don't have overheads that the engineering joints have, so I reckon profit wise you likely made
more out of the job than an engineering shop would have.

shed

In a jobbing shop though it is usually not long before the excess material purchased is used on another job and costs are recouped.
In Richards case, this could take a while.
Might have to start a payment plan to go to the next step. Then they can decide whether it is worth it to continue.

Phil

Originally Posted by Steamwhisperer

In a jobbing shop though it is usually not long before the excess material purchased is used on another job and costs are recouped.
In Richards case, this could take a while.
Might have to start a payment plan to go to the next step. Then they can decide whether it is worth it to continue.

Phil

G/day Phil, In Richards case, he wanted the excess material himself and was willing to pay for it.

2000/week x 51 = 102000 g's per year, how many small engineering shops would show that sort of
profit at the end of the financial year ?

I say 51 weeks because when you run your own small business you only seem to get a week off at xmas because the overheads keep attacking the bank account.

Phil you had a mobile welding business a while ago, I assume that you didn't want the financial burden
of paying rent for a factory and the gamble of whether you would get the work just to cover the rent.

RC, a business not only has rent, they also pay larger power bills, water rates, they likely have 10 x the amount of gas bottles rented, insurance is a killer and the list goes on.... likely a bank loan...

Then if it is a one man show he looses half the week answering phones talking to customers doing paperwork paying his bills ect ect ....100 bucks turns to 50 bucks very quickly.

I have had 2 businesses and my father had an engineering business and had 35 on the staff, when he retired to the shed at home and was charging 20/hr and was no worse off but with a lot less worry.

so cheer up, you actually did well, sometimes a job can go south and cost you.

shed

Originally Posted by shedhappens

G/day Phil, In Richards case, he wanted the excess material himself and was willing to pay for it.

2000/week x 51 = 102000 g's per year, how many small engineering shops would show that sort of
profit at the end of the financial year ?

I say 51 weeks because when you run your own small business you only seem to get a week off at xmas because the overheads keep attacking the bank account.

Phil you had a mobile welding business a while ago, I assume that you didn't want the financial burden
of paying rent for a factory and the gamble of whether you would get the work just to cover the rent.

Hi Shed,
not so much mobile welding but mobile engineering with a lot of welding attached. At the same time I also had a workshop with all the usual overheads.
I found that after the initial 'out of pocket' period (and after a while of overcharging the customers that I didn't like ) and of course offset by the customers that you had to waste time chasing the money from, things started to actually break even. Still further down the track it 'tends' to get easier. It is only on the odd occasion that customers like BOC send you a letter saying that they had decided not to pay accounts this month which was ok as I had decided not to eat that month
The point is, to really gain the benefit from jobbing, it has to be the long haul or use progress payments.
I'm not super happy I am on wages again but not entirely sad either .

Phil